While
the battle for what's right and wrong roars on concerning climate
change as a whole, it seems that many small observations are left to
collect dust while politicians and activists concentrate on their own
immediate problems. It can seem overwhelming at times when
science-fact is pushed into a corner because it doesn't help support
a growingly concerned (or unconcerned) community. Nevertheless, these
data and observations are important in the long term to help climate
scientists and geologists understand how the Earth changes over
millennia and how those changes are affecting the current
climate.

Some great finds have made their way
into DailyTech's news
reel already this year. In January, the National Center for
Atmospheric Research and the University Corporation for Atmospheric
Research published findings that suggested tiny
geological formations could be responsible for regulating
the entire North American region. In February, researchers at the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute released data that suggested
Greenland's rapid glacial retreat is being at least marginally
affected by warm
subtropical waters making their way along currents all the
way into the country's fjords. These findings suggest that at least
one part of the northern hemisphere's climate is controlled more than
partially by ocean systems.

This week, University of
California, Santa Barbara geologist Lorraine Lisiecki has presented
information linking
long-term climate cycles more closely with Earth's ~100,000 year
orbital cycle. And not only does the information suggest quite
clearly that ice ages are an effect of these cycles, it shows that
how adversely the orbit changes inversely affects the climate change.
The idea that the planet's orbit is a large or ultimate factor in the
rise and fall of ice ages is not new, however, the study shows a very
strong connection between hard data and theory.

"The
clear correlation between the timing of the change in orbit and the
change in the Earth's climate is strong evidence of a link between
the two. It is unlikely that these events would not be related to one
another," explains Lisiecki.

The data correlates the
climate change to two different aspects of the Earth's orbit around
the sun as well as its own rotational oscillations. The first is the
Earth's orbital eccentricity, or how elliptical/circular the orbit
is. The second is its inclination, or the angle of its path compared
to the solar orbital mean. The planet's rotational precession, or how
the planet wobbles around its own rotational axis, is the third
contributing factor in Lisiecki's study.

While this evidence
strongly suggest patterns of climate due to local astronomy, Lisiecky
does not solely attribute the cyclical changes to her findings. She
stresses that these kinds of total climate changes are most likely a
complicated interplay between the astronomical system and the Earth's
own weather and more immediate systems. Further, the inverse
relationship between the strength of climate change and the change in
orbital pattern suggest that the overall system simply isn't that
easy to decipher.

Lisiecki used climate data for the last 1.2
million years collected from 57 separate ocean sediment cores in her
study. With this data she discovered the correlation between orbit
and climate. Her full findings have been published in this week's
edition of Nature
Geoscience.

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

quote: Of course half of the face of the face of the planet is not covered in concrete or asphalt, by all means. But I have yet to see a place not affected by the rise of the modern civilization.

Why is it then when you look at a satellite map of the earth you see mostly green where the land masses are instead of black asphalt or white concrete? I think you are confusing 50% with something more like 0.001% as being covered with concrete and asphalt. Come live where I do and you will see the ratio of concrete and asphalt to grass is about 10,000 grass to 1 concrete/asphalt, and I live in a small town, not out in a complete nowhere.

It is people who look out their window and see a parking lot and assume that the world is covered in man made materials who are the same ones freaking out about a fraction of a degree warming that is probably more caused by natural forces than human forces and yet want humans to disappear from the planet so it will "survive". Unless another planet smashes into earth or the sun explodes, the planet will survive, humans may not but the planet will. Mankind should be focused more on how to adapt and flow with the changes in the planet than trying to make it stop changing because we don't want to lose our happy place in climate history we have become acclimated to.